Modeling of air-side heat transfer and pressure drop of straight fin-tube no-frost evaporators for a household refrigerator

Abstract

A mathematical model is proposed for predicting the air-side pressure drop and heat-transfer rate of straight fin-tube heat exchangers of a household refrigerator under nofrosting conditions. The six-sigma method is employed to optimize the preliminary critical-to-quality (CTQ). The proposed model is consistent with the experimental data with an error of less than 15 %. The numerical results agree well with the experimental data. It can be applied to evaluate the thermal-hydraulic performance of a fin-tube heat exchanger with varying fin pitch along the airflow direction.